Personal remittances from overseas Filipinos (OFs) increased by 13.3 percent to $2.652 billion in May 2021 from $2.341 billion during the same month last year.
This brought the cumulative remittances to $13.68 billion in the first five months of 2021, a 6.6 percent rise year-on-year from the $12.835 billion recorded in the comparable period in 2020.
Personal remittances from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more rose by 16.2 percent to $2.056 billion during the month of May from the $1.77 billion in May 2020.
Remittances from sea-based workers and land-based workers with work contracts of less than one year also increased by 2.7 percent to $532 million from $519 million a year ago.
Cash remittances from OFs coursed through banks rose by 13.1 percent to $2.382 billion in May 2021 from $2.106 billion in the comparable month a year ago.
This was due to the 16.2 percent and 2.7 percent increase in receipts from land-based workers and sea-based workers, respectively.
On a year-to-date basis, cash remittances in January — May 2021 reached $12.28.billion, 6.3 percent higher than the year-ago level of $11.554 billion.
The growth in cash remittances from the United States (US), Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore, and Canada contributed largely to the increase in remittances in January — May 2021.
Meanwhile, in terms of country sources, the US registered the highest share of overall remittances at 40.1 percent, followed by Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, South Korea, Qatar, and Taiwan. The combined remittances from these ten countries accounted for 78.3 percent of total cash remittances.
